Pennsylvania political historian Paul B. Beers wrote of Gov. George M. Leader, whose tenure was 1955-1958: “The Leader administration was exciting and controversial – always politically, sometimes legislatively and often intellectually. It was an administration which could trip over hills but move mountains.”
OFF THE FLOOR
A Capitolwire Column
By Peter L. DeCoursey
Bureau Chief
Capitolwire
HARRISBURG (May 9) – On Nov. 15, 1954, Time Magazine’s cover celebrated the Gov.-elect of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who ended decades of GOP control as a rising star and face to watch in 1955 and after: a former state senator and chicken farmer, George Leader.
That was the pinnacle of the political career of the politician and nursing home magnate and leader who died today at the age of 95.
But if politics never rewarded him as he had hoped, Leader became a leading shaper of the top-end nursing home industry in the state, a philanthropist of note in the midstate, and an enduring toiler and donor, trying to improve public education.
Former Senate President Pro Tem Harvey Taylor, a top leader of the state GOP from the 1940s to the 1960s, liked to deride Leader as “that whiz kid from York,” recalled state political historian Paul B. Beers in his classic “Pennsylvania Politics: Yesterday and Today.”
Beers wrote that Leader would retort by fuming that that Taylor was “Enemy #1.”
But in 1957, Taylor said of Leader: “He was the best governor in my lifetime. I mean in terms of accomplishments. He was one of the poorest politicians, but the best governor.”
Fifty-six years later, state Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said: “If a man is measured by the impact he has on others, then Governor Leader was a giant in this commonwealth.
“Not only did he fund a prison ministry, but he participated in that ministry and improved the lives of thousands of inmates.”
Leader also played a role in John F. Kennedy’s winning the key Pennsylvania delegation for the Democratic nomination for president in 1960. As a strong supporter of former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956, Leader backed Kennedy even when his brother Henry stuck with Stevenson, who was a key part of the “Stop Kennedy” forces.
“He was the Democrat’s best chance of being nominated and elected,” Leader said. “I was pretty young back then, and his youth, charisma and personality came across impressively when we talked for more than an hour at the York Fair.”
Unlike his father Guy Leader, also a leading chicken breeder, farmer and state senator, Leader became governor, and was talked of as a candidate for senator, vice president, and by some, who thought he could tame his sharp-tongued attacks, as Pennsylvania’s first president since James Buchanan.
But undone by the big-party bosses in Philadelphia, and to a lesser extent in Pittsburgh in 1958, Leader lost to U.S. Sen. Hugh Scott, R-Montgomery.
But unlike other losers of big races who hung around long thereafter as also-rans, Leader plunged into the nursing home business, moved to Hershey, and became, Gov. Ed Rendell said, “a Pennsylvania version of Nelson Rockefeller. Nelson made his money before politics; George Leader made his money after politics. But people don’t realize that as a politician, while his governorship was short,” due to a one-term limit, “he started a lot of things that other governors, including Tom Ridge and Milt Shapp and myself all built on since then. His commitment to education has lived on, because that was his issue.”
Gov. Tom Corbett said: “As a governor and in the years after public service, George Leader defied political labels and conventional thinking in his tireless work for Pennsylvania and its people. He was among the first of our leaders to warn against budget deficits and he was an early proponent of civil rights and economic development.”
Rendell said: “He not only did a lot for education as governor, but he gave away millions of dollars of computers and equipment to schools and after-cares. He was a great politician and a great philanthropist, and there isn’t really anybody else like him.”
Leader endorsed Rendell over Auditor General, now U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. in 2002. After Rendell was elected, Leader asked if his granddaughter, Meredith Janeczek-Mills, could have her wedding reception in the governor’s mansion. Rendell said: “We were delighted to say yes.”
Starting his nursing home chain in 1960, by 1981, Leader’s network of advanced-care nursing homes was the state’s largest and he sold it, starting a new chain, Country Meadows, which his family now runs. Leader then founded Providence Place, which he ran until his death.
But he remained proud of his four years as governor, which were regarded as special by more than Taylor.
Beers wrote: “The Leader administration was exciting and controversial – always politically, sometimes legislatively and often intellectually. It was an administration which could trip over hills but move mountains.
“In achievements it ranks with the best administrations in Pennsylvania history. Because of Leader, too, the modern Democrats in Pennsylvania came of age…Leader helped make them respectable and responsible in the 1950s. He was able to turn over his job to a Democratic successor – and no Democrat had done that in Pennsylvania in 114 years.”
He was a pioneer in government borrowing and investment, creating the Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority, a program Shapp and Casey and Rendell all expanded and built upon.
He pushed hard to get more treatment and less incarceration to be the philosophy of mental hospitals, and required school districts to develop special education programs, sped up the construction of I-80 and created the forerunners of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and Department of Aging. He also began a program that proposed to expand state parks until there was one within 25 miles of every Pennsylvania resident and instituted civil service for professional employees.
He also delighted partisans and reporters with his sharp tongue. Beers wrote: “In his younger years Leader was venomously anti-Republican. Part of the reason was his moralism. Had he lacked wit, he could have come as a common scold and a dreadfully unfair one at times. He was at his funniest in his trip to San Francisco in 1956 in support of Adlai Stevenson. At a gathering, he quipped to Californians, ‘I hope you can find an off-shore island for your former senator. I saw a little place in the bay today.’” referring to the prison for dangerous criminals on Alcatraz.
Beers wrote: “Immediately Leader was attacked nationwide for suggesting that Vice President Nixon be put on Alcatraz. The New York Herald-Tribune, a Republican organ, editorialized that Leader had taken ‘the low road in campaign oratory.’ Leader shot off a telegram to the GOP national chairman, Leonard Hall: ‘Keep your shirt on. I referred to an ‘off-shore island.’
“One of them … is Seal Rocks. As a trained seal to the reactionary right-wing Republicans, Mr. Nixon might feel at home there.” He kept it up, mentioning perhaps Treasure Island as suitable “in view of Nixon’s success in raising campaign funds.” With a deadpan expression, he posed the question: “What is there about Nixon which makes even his supporters think of Alcatraz as a retirement home for him?”
Beers also wrote: “He became governor at the end of the Joe McCarthy era when ‘eggheads’ were not only unpopular but under suspicion in many circles. Yet Leader recruited as many eggheads as he could. Before his inaugural he had a brain trust of 25 plan his administration… It was said of the four governors of the 1950s and 1960s “Ray Shafer had his ‘Northwest Palace Guard,’ Bill Scranton his ‘Whiz Kids,’ George Leader his ‘eggheads,’ and [David] ‘Lawrence had Lawrence.’”
“…It wasn’t accidental that many of the storms in the Leader administration resulted, at least in part, from the antipathies the governor stirred up” with Republicans. “… Leader bucked Democrats just as hard. “You get into so much more trouble with your own party,” he later observed to newspapermen. “You expect the opposition party to fight you, because that is its role. But you have a much more difficult time dealing with your own party the second two years because they know your time is limited, and they expect to go on forever.” When Leader was out of office and President Johnson was riding high in 1964, Leader told friends that he had one regret about his style of governor, that he hadn’t been a Lyndon Johnson type of generalissimo.”
Leader helped both Rendell and Gov. Bob Casey win their elections as governor, partly due to party loyalty but mostly because Leader believed strongly they were needed to fund education properly.
And he had an instinctive sympathy for anyone who held the office of governor, especially in Pennsylvania.
Last year he said of Gov. Tom Corbett, whom he met only after Corbett was elected: “The first time I had the temerity to tell him that I thought that he was doing a great job in balancing the budget and getting it worked out and I said; ‘and I don’t think it’s gonna hurt you politically.’ I hate to say that as a Democrat to a Republican governor, but I think there are enough people in Pennsylvania who appreciate the fantastic job you did balancing that budget, some of them are going to vote for you.”
Leader saw him again one lunchtime and was tickled by the idea that the once and current governors of Pennsylvania could run into each other at Wendy’s in Hershey.
“Each time I’ve been more impressed with the kind of man that he is,” Leader said of Corbett. “…The governor said, you know, I gotta work to balance the budget. He said there are some things we need and some things we’d like to do. But the things we need, I’m gonna do my best to not cut too hard, too severely.”
In 2002, Leader praised then-ex-Gov. Tom Ridge “for finally making some progress, so corrections facilities are finally correcting, not just warehousing.”
Leader was also a stern defender of his industry, and occasionally sparred with Govs. Rendell and Casey when he felt their policies or comments reflected poorly on the industry. A more serious, bitter and ongoing scolding started in the Ridge administration for then-Auditor General Bob Casey Jr. Leader used a Pennsylvania Cable Network interview and other opportunities to scold Casey about demonizing the nursing home with audits that slammed Ridge for under-regulating.
In 2000, Leader said: “Frankly, I don’t know how much Bob Casey really knows about nursing homes. … Unless he gets his perspective together, he’s really not qualified to be governor of this state because the governor should have a fairness, he should be interested in justice and love [and] mercy.”
Leader’s remarks drew attention because they came as the nursing home industry gave Casey an award, and industry figures praised him for focusing on problems outside of their control, as well as urging them to do better.
But Leader said: “I hope Bob will pray over that and think hard before he decides he wants to dedicate the next year or two to running down a whole industry to enhance his capabilities of being elected governor.”
Leader also remained active and outspoken on issues and philanthropy even in recent months, Rendell said, noting that Leader signed a judicial merit selection letter sent to lawmakers by those two governors, Ridge and Gov. Dick Thornburgh.
He also counseled Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, the first statewide office winner from York County since Leader. DePasquale said: “Gov. Leader was a pioneer in reforming state government. He started the transformation of state government from a patronage system to professional workforce.
“He lived the definition of a statesman in his approach to government and his approach to life after being governor. His passing is a great loss to York County and the entire state because he was an inspiration to many people and provided counsel to many governors in the past half-century.
“When I jumped into the race for auditor general I had lunch with Gov. Leader to get his perspective and bounce ideas off him. His advice and insight proved right on the mark.”
During his term as chairman of the York County Democratic Party, that organization’s annual fall dinner was renamed in Leader’s honor.
Prison reform remained a major issue for Leader. In 2002, he held a reading of his book, “Healing Poems,” which included a verse called “Be a LikeWiser,” which stated: “”Then there are those in prison cells/Who really hurt so much/We need to visit them today/And give a friendly touch.”
After reading the poem, Leader said, “when I was governor, we had 7,000 in our [state] prison cells, today we have 37,000 and it costs $27,000 each to keep them there. We could send them all to Harvard for that amount of money, and I’d like to send them to Harvard, to see if they can do better than we have.”
After reading another poem that day about children who reminded him of four adopted grandchildren from the Azores, Leader praised Ridge again, “because he started a program to help poor people adopt. People don’t know how expensive it is to adopt now. Lots of good parents can’t afford it. So that’s a good program.”
Reflecting on 9/11, he said he was glad that initial inclinations to do something violent in response were allowed to pass: “So we need to do something. But we gotta be careful what we do about it. When we get up to Heaven, there’ll be some Muslims there, so we better be prepared.”
